Am J Psychiatry 1985; 142:917-921
Copyright © 1985 by American Psychiatric Association
Empathy and outcome in brief focal dynamic therapy
NK Free, BL Green, MC Grace, LA Chernus and RM Whitman
In an attempt to test the hypothesis that therapist empathy is an important
variable in successful dynamic therapy, the authors collected outcome
measures and empathy ratings in the brief focal dynamic therapy of 59
patients. There was no significant agreement among patients, therapists,
and clinical supervisors when they used the same scale to rate therapist
empathy for the same sessions. Only the patients' ratings correlated
significantly with some of the outcome measures, and they added modest but
statistically significant predictive variance on multiple regression
analysis. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the
traditional mode of supervision of dynamic therapy.
